Conservative Party Tracks More Than 1,000 Memberships Back to Two IP Addresses

After Kevin O’Leary trumpets anonymous accusations, an internal investigation finds the problem is very real.

The Conservative Party has discovered scores of online membership sign-ups broke the rules, following an investigation into allegations of voter fraud in the party's leadership race.

The party announced Friday evening that it found 1,351 memberships that had been purchased through the party website by two anonymous IP addresses. The statement says that those purchases were not made the members that were supposedly signing up — a violation of the rules.

"Over the course of the last six months, the Conservative Party of Canada has received 1,233 prepaid credit card transactions through our website. We have examined each of those transactions and roughly half of those have been traced to the mentioned IP addresses purchasing memberships," the party said in a statement. The party has removed those names from the membership roles and they will be ineligible vote.

The news lends credibility to allegations made earlier this week from an anonymous source, and trumpeted by front-runner Kevin O'Leary, who blamed "backroom organizers who are committing widespread vote rigging."

O'Leary's campaign released a statement from Julian Fantino, a former Conservative cabinet minister and surrogate for the candidate.